Is liberalism becoming more anti-intellectual?

[dead0man]

link-Cornell

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[136or142]

link-Cornell

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That's interesting.  My soil scientist friend has always rolled her eyes at Jeffrey Smith, but she's mentioned some of these other things.  I'll ask her if she has a response.

She does have concerns other than the effects of GMOs on human health though. For instance, there was the successful lawsuit on the negative effects of Roundup which is made more useful with GMO seeds.

[dead0man]

Yeah, that was unfunkingbelievable and will no doubt be fixed by a higher court. 12 people in a jury don't know more than scientists/science shouldn't be decided in a court room.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

? I support GMO crops?

sometimes, but you're way softer on it than I remember

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do you want this for all new foods or are GMOs special?

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there is nothing stopping farmers from using their own seed now (they can even purchase new seed like this...they don't though....want to guess why?) and seed companies were operating under this model long before GMOs

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I must be missremembering, my bad.  Let Adam know though, k?

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the last few times I've hoe'd this row have been elsewhere and for some reason "monoculture:how bad it is and why the GMO companies invented it are all evil" have kept coming up.  Of course it's not bad (or at least not not good....what?) and existed long before GMOs.

I think the main issue is what you're basically implying here: the big issue isn't GMO crops, but agriculture in general. The economics of GMO is fuzzy, but I don't think there's a country in the world that remotely pays its farmers enough (or they pay the wrong people too much). In regards to Terminator seeds, it isn't just the companies being greedy - it would be an enormous help for those ecologists who fear transgenes entering the broader gene pool, which could create all sorts of messes (there are other uses as well), but it would kill a lot of smallholder practices. BtCorn is a good example - there's nothing inherently wrong with it being GM, but it is a bit of a Dodge of the central problem which is that America grows way, way too much corn that they don't even eat. Monocultures are also part of the broader problem with agriculture (possibly). I happen to believe that agricultural scientists that are mainly interested in monocultures are operating under the incorrect assumption that monocultures automatically promote yield, which (as the emerging field of agroecosystems seems to indicate) may not be necessarily correct.

I do think that conventionally breeded crops should be tested more, but the reason I believe that it's useful to especially be interested in certain GM crops is the ability to put completely novel genes (and therefore proteins) in. The one time this didn't happen that I know of is papya iirc, which luckily had no negative effects.

[dead0man]

I think the main issue is what you're basically implying here: the big issue isn't GMO crops, but agriculture in general.

indeed.  Many of the complaints about GMOs have little to do with them and have everything to do with how we do modern agriculture.

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countries shouldn't pay farmers, markets should.  Like all other producers of things.

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I don't know enough about all that to properly discus it (like that ever stopped me before! or stops anybody that is anti-GMO from talking out their ass).  I know monocultures are neither inherently good nor inherently bad.  I know farmers have been buying "terminator seeds" for a long time.  I know yields are higher than they've ever been (and higher than anywhere else on the planet).  I know we're using less and safer herbicides than ever (and less and safer than anywhere else on the planet).  Sure, we probably grow too much corn and we certainly shouldn't be subsidizing it.  It (too much and subsidized) does make food cheaper, and that's great news for poor people, but maybe food would be even cheaper without the subsidies...we'd certainly get more back in taxes or that money could be used by another wing of the govt.

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but the thing is, conventionally bred crops are infinitely more likely to have negative side affects (Torie?) because we don't know what the mutations are exactly.  We know EXACTLY what's been changed in GM crops, and nothing extra is changed.  I still think it should be "tested", but not as rigorously as the more "randomly" bred foods.....do we even still do that?  Why?

[All Along The Watchtower]

I don't understand the question.

[Torie]

Wrong again Dead0. It's effects, a noun in this context. Maybe you should just do the opposite of what you think is right.

Here is a head-scratcher for you, where both versions are verbs. He affects change, and he effects change, are both grammatically correct. But one means he has an influence on change, and the other means he is the causative agent of change.

[OSR stands with Israel]

There's an entire major political party in the US that denies climate change.

Don't lecture me about anti-intellectualism.

The Far Left Denies Math with absurd plans like increasing Government spending by 42 trillion dollars with really no way to pay for them.

[afleitch]

Liberalism is so intellectual, it's not moaning about being silenced on Twitter, 'DESTROYING' on YouTube or grifting on Patreon.

[136or142]

There's an entire major political party in the US that denies climate change.

Don't lecture me about anti-intellectualism.

The Far Left Denies Math with absurd plans like increasing Government spending by 42 trillion dollars with really no way to pay for them.

The $42 trillion figure has been debated and doesn't seem to have much merit but there is no question the far left would add considerably to the deficit/debt.

Both the far left and the mainstream (extreme) right use the same basic economic theory as a rationale for their policies, so it is literally impossible to claim the far left is anti-intellectual without also admitting the mainstream (extreme) right is also anti-intellectual.

The difference though is that the Republicans are so intellectually dishonest they change their economic theories when a Republican is in the White House vs when a Democrat is in the White House.

The far left Democrats are post Keynesians who argue that 'deficit spending pays for itself' on the basis of an economic subset school known as Chartalism (not all Post Keynesians are Chartalists.)  At its core 'Chartalism' argues that long run growth is only achieved through government deficit spending, however on a more basic level, it's taken as a justification for post Keynesians to argue that 'deficit spending pays for itself.'

However, Chartalism is a subset of an economic school called 'Modern Monetary Theory' (MMT.)  MMT was essentially started by friends of the goofball economist Arthur Laffer as a new argument to justify further tax cuts for the rich after the idea that 'trickle down economics' resulting in tax cuts paying for themselves was found to be false.  MMT was behind Dick Cheney's claim that "deficits don't matter."

In this case though, at least the Post Keynesians are consistent in their views.  Conservatives embrace 'deficits don't matter' when a Republican is President and push for more tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy, while embracing balanced budget Monetarism theory when a Democrat is President.  So, not only are conservatives/Republicans anti-intellectual, they are intellectually dishonest.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Lmao at the idea of liberalism being anti intellectual because about 10 people care about GMO crops.

[HisGrace]

Yes, but at not anywhere near the rate conservatism is.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

There's also the fat pride movement.

[Cassandra]

I think it depends on what you mean by liberalism.

The anti-GMO, anti-vaccine crowd, that also tends be into horoscopes and "crystals," are a discrete group whose politics vary from liberal to non-liberal left to entirely apolitical beyond their pet issues.

I do think there is a widespread cultural shift against intellectuals which is not contained to the right (though is certainly most vocal there). People with graduate educations come disproportionately from wealthy backgrounds and go on to make much more money than the average American. People from outside this elite tenth or so of American society have barely treaded water since the Great Recession. Meanwhile, they watch as the professional/upper-management/intellectual class have gained significant wealth (largely on the back of an ever buoyant stock market).

I think the anti-science/anti-rationality movements that have gained a foothold among certain more left-leaning sectors is directly connected to the divergence in wealth accumulation we have witnessed over the past decade. There are a great many people who feel they have been left behind: those who went into debt for a bachelor's degree which has not led to financial security, those who are still living in small towns as wealth concentrates in the major urban cores, those whose have slowly been rebuilding their household wealth to 2006 levels after the housing crash set them back a decade, etc. etc.

For people in that position, is not difficult to see how resentment at the upper class's leap financial leap forward over the past decade could spill over into disdain for those institutions and ideologies that the same upper class holds dear. For better of worse, science itself is distinctly tied to the values of this upper class, whose world view I would term "liberal" in opposition to how the OP uses it. Liberal-left readers who come from affluent backgrounds may be surprised at the number of young people from working class backgrounds who have discarded the college dream and are instead looking to learn trades, get CDLs, or whatever other hustle can guarantee decent money. Tied to that decision is a deep-seated disdain of the college system (a "scam" that unlucky older siblings have emerged from weighed down by debt) and a concurrent dislike of the kids who can afford college, along with their world views and the cultural signifiers attached to them.

I believe the "anti-GMO, anti-vaccine crowd, that also tends be into horoscopes and 'crystals' crowd," as I called them earlier are intimately connected to the Trump phenomenon on the right. They represent a similar anti-liberal, anti-establishment, anti-upper class movement that emerges (partially) from material conditions. However, rather than channeling their dissatisfaction in white identity politics like Trump voters, these folks have chosen to fixate on issues that are closest to them; that is, the health of their kids. Their errors are besides the point. They represent one slice of a larger movement. That movement encompasses the right-wing revolt, but is of course distinct from it due to the lack of racial animus. This groups kin is not nearly as political organized as its right-wing equivalent, though elements of it can be found in formations like the DSA (though the DSA is not entirely representative of this group, saturated as it is by Marxist professors and graduate students).